There is a 90% chance that I will get to put on a 2 week Roman camp for gifted/talented secondary students for my school district. The event starts June 12 and ends on the 27. I would like to get suggestions from forum members on activities that would be educational and hands on. I will include some lecture/discussion, but would rather provide practical experiences.

Here are some ideas I have in mind already: Erecting a roman tent, trying on a Roman kit, modeling a Roman structure using Sketch up or some sort of wood modeling, preparing Roman food, guest speakers, making a Roman standard.

Without even asking them, I can say that Cohort Five supports this activity. Not many of us can give up two weeks, but we can come for a weekend and help out. We have a log tower we can erect, now that we've shortened it to an approximately 8 foot high platform. You'll see it at Fort Parker, and we can talk more about it then. Bring your best info and I'll bet we can get some soldiers down there to help.

Foods is another activity, of course. Everybody eats, and why not have some of the meals made from Roman recipes?

How about javelin throwing, ropes and knots, boffer sword and cardboard shield combat, and some hands-on activities like quick-set clay articles?

Obviously not as exciting as the 'sticking sharp shiny things in people' activities :wink: you could have them make up a mosaic, working out the patterns then setting it out over the time. The cheapest way is to make the tesserae (tiles) using air drying clay and then paint them.
I've done a rough calculation and over here in the UK you could get enough clay for a mosaic about 1.6m x 1.6m (5' x 5') for £35.00/$56.00, (about 15,000 tesserae). You'd have to paint them, just use a wire and cut the clay into sheets 3/8" thick and then paint the surface before cutting into tesserae.

If you want to do something like that let me know and I'd be happy to send you plans for different designs, border patterns with corners etc. There wouldn't be any charge for a project like this.

Depending on space, you could try a bit of Roman surveying, using a homemade groma? It should be fairly straightforward technically, but also demonstrate a bit of practical mathematics. You could plan a road or small camp perhaps. And unlike the fire, there should hopefully be fewer health and safety considerations...

Quote:Surveying sounds like a great idea. If you had a GPS and the space then you could have them in teams and at the end check the results and see which team is the more accurate.

Might be a bit expensive and fiddly though. Another option would be to see if you could get hold of a bog standard theodolite, as used by surveyors and archaeologists, and compare the two. As it is basically an updated groma you could even forgo the reconstruction, although you'd be missing out a bit then. Total stations do the same but can tell the distance to a particular point as well, however that again misses out on the fun of pacing out your own distances.

On surveying sent a Pm and beginning next year i will sent you drawings ofa groma chorobates decempeda and so on you yust need a surveyor who can oparete them "i"m in Europe "but gla to help btw the chorobates level is easy, so you could make an aquaduct with them by using dolabra and other original tools, or even try making a strech of roman road.
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